[Adam Lincoln]

Thinking of heading up tomorrow, rain forcast for late afternoon. Whats condition is it likely to be in at the moment?

Thoughts?

[GCW]

Good call, I was thinking of heading there on Friday.  But the forecast is crap to say the least.

[Adam Lincoln]

Good call, I was thinking of heading there on Friday.  But the forecast is crap to say the least.

Join us if you like tomorrow? Do you think it will be in condition?

[GCW]

Love to, but I'm working until the afternoon.  Have fun!!

[GCW]

Looking out the window I assume you haven't gone today Adam.

Friday's forecast has picked up a bit though.

[Adam Lincoln]

Looking out the window I assume you haven't gone today Adam.

Friday's forecast has picked up a bit though.

Yeah, rain had progressed faster than though and changed to an ETA of 1pm. Sacked it off.

Very keen for Friday if you boys are? Could go in one car, carbon footprint and all that?

Going Trowbarrow tomorrow all being well, start work on Iron Man, ill let nik know, see if he can give me some beta! 

[nik at work]

RH - good crimp/edge
LH - poor crimp
LF - Very low good foothold (a pocket thing)
RF - Flagging to the right
LH - up to base of groove
RF - step through and smear up and left of left foot
LF - take off rock and hang out to the left
RH - Up to blobby pinch near top of groove
LF - Onto obvious small edge off to the left
RF - Off rock flagging behind left leg
LH - up to sloper at top of groove just left of RH
Alter body position to set up for..
LH - up to pinch starting hold of Vitruvian Man
RF - heel hooking at base of groove
LF - off rock
RH - out to poor intermediate sloper
Alter body position so more twisted round on the heel hook
RH - out to RH starting hold of Vitruvian Man
LF - onto edge to the left of the starting RH hold.
RF - big toe hook
RH - up to small intermediate sidepull
Set up and then throw
RH - to big distant sidepull
LF - to base of groove
RF - to hold above RH starting hold
LF - to top of groove
RF - drop off hold and flag
LH - slap to sidepull below top
RF - next to left foot
LF - onto LH starting hold of Vitruvian Man
RF - drop off hold and flag
LH - slap up to top over to the left at obvious sidepully hold
RF - poor heel hook on RH starting hold of Vitruvian Man
RH - top
LH - match
Topout with more elegance than I mustered for Vitruvian Man

[Adam Lincoln]

RH - good crimp/edge
LH - poor crimp
LF - Very low good foothold (a pocket thing)
RF - Flagging to the right
LH - up to base of groove
RF - step through and smear up and left of left foot
LF - take off rock and hang out to the left
RH - Up to blobby pinch near top of groove
LF - Onto obvious small edge off to the left
RF - Off rock flagging behind left leg
LH - up to sloper at top of groove just left of RH
Alter body position to set up for..
LH - up to pinch starting hold of Vitruvian Man
RF - heel hooking at base of groove
LF - off rock
RH - out to poor intermediate sloper
Alter body position so more twisted round on the heel hook
RH - out to RH starting hold of Vitruvian Man
LF - onto edge to the left of the starting RH hold.
RF - big toe hook
RH - up to small intermediate sidepull
Set up and then throw
RH - to big distant sidepull
LF - to base of groove
RF - to hold above RH starting hold
LF - to top of groove
RF - drop off hold and flag
LH - slap to sidepull below top
RF - next to left foot
LF - onto LH starting hold of Vitruvian Man
RF - drop off hold and flag
LH - slap up to top over to the left at obvious sidepully hold
RF - poor heel hook on RH starting hold of Vitruvian Man
RH - top
LH - match
Topout with more elegance than I mustered for Vitruvian Man

  Your serious as well!

[GCW]

If it's of any use to you Adam, I have about 6 hours of video of Nik on it

Beta in action:

[Mike Tyson]

Could be tempted by a Friday trip to St.Bees myself. The weather is shite at present however. Can give an update on Friday morning if needed?

[nik at work]

Ha-de-fucking-ha-ha...

That's my beta Adam, but I'm short so you may find some of it (the heel hook in the groove springs to mind) ridiculously cramped. It's a great problem, and much longer than it looks. Just need to do it.....

That would be tres helpful Golt

[magpie]

RH - good crimp/edge ... Topout with more elegance than I mustered for Vitruvian Man

I know this is off-topic, but, it never fails to amaze me how people can do that.     How on earth do you remember that long a sequence of moves when you aren't even near the problem?   I can barely remember what holds I'm meant to be using having just fallen off the bloody boulder, it's very impressive.    Is it a guy thing?  Or can other girls do it, just not me?  ???

[nik at work]

Obviously I have enormous brain capacity to go with my sheer animal magnetism (old school pics...)

Have you spent several sessions trying the same problem, refining and tweaking your technique in an effort to beat a problem into submission? Or do you do the sensible thing and just go and try something else. There's nothing impressive about having your life taken over by a five metre piece of limestone...

[GCW]

I ain't saying anything

[magpie]

Have you spent several sessions trying the same problem, refining and tweaking your technique in an effort to beat a problem into submission? Or do you do the sensible thing and just go and try something else. There's nothing impressive about having your life taken over by a five metre piece of limestone...

Erm, in a word no, I tend to give up after about 4 goes and throw a tantrum.    I think it's quite a skill.

[nik at work]

G you can't say anything. Your life was taken over by an even smaller piece of limestone (ahem, pit problem, ahem)

Magpie I salute your lack of focus

[Jaspersharpe]

I've still got precise beta for entire routes in my head from 17 years ago.

However, I also couldn't even remember how to find the path to Crag X.

Go figure. 

[BenF]

Is it a guy thing?  Or can other girls do it, just not me?  ???

Like Jasper, I have an unbelievable memory for moves, holds and sequences.  Even from routes I did over ten years ago and yet forget to purchase the most obvious items required for cooking dinner. 

Maybe its a guy thing, maybe its just a "being obsessed about and thinking about climbing nearly every waking minute" thing.  What I can tell you is that my girlfriend, who is a fairly accomplished and strong climber has almost no memory of what she's just done on a route or problem.  To the point of failing to remember holds she's used with her hands may be useful one move later for her feet.  God knows how she redpoints stuff as every ascent she makes is effectively onsight (apart from me yelling up beta remembered from my ascent of the route, often made several years previously).

It's not just a guy thing though.  Monolith can fail to remember holds and moves of problems like no-one else I know (except Caryl, see above).  He needs someone to remind him which problem he's trying.

[magpie]

my girlfriend...has almost no memory of what she's just done on a route or problem.  To the point of failing to remember holds she's used with her hands may be useful one move later for her feet. 

That sounds worryingly familiar, I'm glad it's not just me.  I wondered maybe if it was a certain bit of your brain that helped you do it, a manly bit, probably (at the risk of sounding sexist) the same bit that means you can park properly and set the video timer without step by step instructions 

[slackline]

It wouldn't be particularly sexist, its well known that males have better spatial awareness and are more adept at 3D orientation problems then females.

One possible (evolutionary based) explanation to this is that in the early evolution of humans it was the males who were the hunters who left home and went out hunting and required the ability to find their way home afterwards whilst females tended to be the gatherers staying closer to home which required less spatial awareness, but allowed them to develop their gassing social skills.  But without a time machine this will only ever remain a theory.

[Jaspersharpe]

My mate John who's not been climbing long / often has the same trouble. I keep telling him to visualise the entire problem before setting off but invariably he'll get three moves in and start moving the wrong foot or something (even with me shouting "LEFT FOOT, LEFT FOOT!!"). Conversely, I've climbed with women who are beta fiends so I don't think it's necessarily solely a male/female thing.

[magpie]

It wouldn't be particularly sexist, its well known that males have better spatial awareness

I am clearly too used to posting on boards populated by angst ridden feminists who get upset by such statements. I like that you gave me links in case I didn't know what you were talking about The theory makes a lot of sense.

I think maybe part of the reason I don't remember whole problems is that quite often I do them in a totally different way from everyone else I'm climbing with, or a slightly different way each time I try them, that coupled with laziness and a defeatist attitude mean that I don't have much need for the skill of memorising whole problems.

Edit: Sorry Adam, were not really on topic anymore, are we?  

[BenF]

Yeah, there may be something in the spatial awareness thing (see Slack-Line's link), but I reckon a lot is down to our desire to remember these things.  I'm really sad so it's very important to my emotional wellbeing to remember beta and every detail of a guidebook and therefore I have developed my inbuilt beta directory and ability to remember directions or find places without using a map (but inability to study, work any more than the minimum, earn decent money or purchase basic food stuffs even with a list) and there's my girlfriend who just likes going climbing and having fun in a warm place (and not on some cold, windy grit edge in January) so has her goldfish like climbing memory, a blank expression when returning to crags that we've visited numerous times and ability to get lost in a motorway services whilst walking between the entrance and the toilets (but this is rather outweighed by her awesome professionalism at work, quick thinking and four degrees, yes four).

[nik at work]

In my experience people are very good at remembering things that they consider to be important. As such I remember climbing "stuff". Birthdays, the order of the months, dates, numbers of days in months, names, car registrations, fashion and Strictly Come Dancing are all deeply unimportant to me so I struggle to retain any memory of them. My wife on the other hand has an encyclopaedic knowledge of these things and is staggered by my incompetence.

It is however nice to have my genius appreciated by someone Magpie .

(I imagine Magpie is not good at remembering sequences as she derives pleasure from climbing as an activity rather than pleasure being merely a function of success, truly she is the enlightened one)

[Kingy]

I devised what we dubbed a sort of 'mind map' of some redpoint projects that me and my mate had a few years back. For Raindogs and Energy Vampire I wrote out a diagram including every hold and smear used along with notes in the margin next to every hold describing how to do each move. We basically lived and breathed these routes for the time it took to do them. By the time of the actual ascent, each move was programmed into the subconscious so that we were no longer remembering the moves, we were just executing them with no conscious thought. This left us to channel all of our energies into climbing each move as efficiently as possible. Although this may seem a bit extreme, it seemed to work and meant that the chance of fluffing a redpoint by simply forgetting how to do a particular move was eliminated. The only thing that could go wrong on each attempt was physical factors such as not being strong enough etc.

I don't think there is any particular bias towards males over females in the ability to remember details of sequences of moves, more the tendency of some climbers to obsess over routes to the nth degree in their desire to do them.  as charged